Kestrel Stencil is a display family cut for signs, not screens
Berlin foundry Kestrel Type built its new stencil face by spraying letters onto walls, then drawing what survived.
Most stencil typefaces start life in a font editor. Kestrel Stencil started with a can of spray paint and a disused car park in Wedding. Kestrel Type’s three designers cut more than two hundred paper stencils over a summer, sprayed them onto concrete and photographed the results in raking light.
The finished family keeps the useful accidents. Bridges are slightly wider at the top than the bottom, counters are generous enough to survive overspray, and the numerals are drawn to be read from a moving car.
Five weights and a lot of arrows
Kestrel Stencil ships in five weights, from a slender Light to a dense Black, with an extended set of arrows, pictograms and fractions for wayfinding work. There is also a clean companion without bridges for small sizes, so a signage system can use one voice from a motorway gantry down to a room number.
